Finding Prosecutorial Misconduct, Alabama Courts Grant Relief from Two Capital Convictions

In one week, courts in unre­lat­ed cas­es have grant­ed relief to two Alabama death row inmates because of prosecutorial misconduct. 

On March 11, Alabama Circuit Judge Robert Smith dis­missed cap­i­tal charges against ex-state troop­er George Martin and barred his retri­al because of the pros­e­cu­tion’s ​“will­ful mis­con­duct.” Martin had been con­vict­ed for alleged­ly mur­der­ing his wife in a car fire. 

In 2000, jurors rec­om­mend­ed that Martin be sen­tenced to life, but the tri­al judge over­rode their rec­om­men­da­tion and imposed a death sen­tence. In that tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion assert­ed that Martin had burned his wife alive, but sup­pressed a wit­ness’s state­ment that she kept a can of gas in her car. It also will­ful­ly with­held evi­dence that it had shown pho­tos of every black troop­er from Mobile County to a white wit­ness who had seen a ​“large black man” in a troop­er’s uni­form in the vicin­i­ty of the car, and that the wit­ness not only had not iden­ti­fied Martin (who is 5′6″), but had select­ed the pic­ture of a different trooper.

Judge Smith wrote, ​“If the Martin case is not one which is appro­pri­ate for dis­missal, there may nev­er be one.…The affir­ma­tive use by the pros­e­cu­tors of par­tial truths and untruths with knowl­edge,” he wrote, con­sti­tut­ed ​“will­ful misconduct.” 

One week lat­er, on March 18, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new tri­al for Derek Horton because the pros­e­cu­tion had improp­er­ly attempt­ed “[t]o but­tress its weak case” against Horton for the mur­der of a woman in a bur­glar­ized mobile home by pre­sent­ing evi­dence of his past drug use and of an inves­ti­ga­tion against him for domestic violence. 

The court said this evi­dence of bad char­ac­ter was ​“super­flu­ous to the State’s case” and ​“served no pur­pose oth­er than to paint Horton as a drug-using, drug-deal­ing crim­i­nal who had a propen­si­ty to com­mit vio­lent crimes against women.” The court found the use of this evi­dence espe­cial­ly prej­u­di­cial because the state had ​“pro­duced no wit­ness­es or direct evi­dence plac­ing Horton at [the victim]‘s mobile home at the time of the crime” and his fin­ger­prints were not found on any of the mur­der weapon or any of the items tak­en from the mobile home or strewn about the high­way in the vicin­i­ty of the loca­tion in which the vic­tim’s stolen car had been abandoned.